


four in the morning

by EmeliaK



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, also sayo goes off, and so ranyuki back into the real world, ranyuki falling through the cracks in the night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 21:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeliaK/pseuds/EmeliaK
Summary: And there beyond.(Yukina and Ran, in one liminal night and the ensuing afternoon.)





	four in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> (Very lightly T. Kind of almost G, actually. A freeform first third. Enjoy!)

They're lying there in the dark,

the only thing giving the room any form the electric blue light falling in from a lamppost outside,

so faintly and yet presently filtering in through the patterns in the blinds and casting itself over the walls,

filling the room with a melancholy; the kind you only witness when your eyes adjust to the faintest traces and you gaze at the space around you,

in the stillest silence save for the rainlike breeze of a passing vehicle,

within the projection of a single liminal hue

like you've coincided with a crack in the night.

 

Ran's lying there in the dark,

gazing out through the window over which the blinds are set

and behind the pattern and the paint-chipped white wooden windowframe, she sees an electricity pole

standing higher and closer than anything else in the view outside

against a sky that's dark as dark is and yet so softly lit in hue

and the wires pass in front, over the lamppost and across the window

and in the other direction, away and to the houses across from the one they're in, and down a street that runs away from them,

creating a path from which Ran drapes her imagination of the surrounding area,

and tonight, she's glad she got to see this.

 

Yukina's lying there in the dark,

in the bedroom of a house she doesn't quite know,

but rather one they spent the night in on the way somewhere,

wherever somewhere is; they'd run off together with each other in tow, taken by the hazy glow of the drinks everyone had shared with them,

in an abandoned direction, lightless and varied for a long, tiring stretch, and then light again along with their bodies in a residential district they didn't recognise,

only able to assume that it was far away.

 

"Mitake?" Last-name terms just feel right,

"Minato?" at this point,

"What are you looking at?" from all the miniature moments they've spent with each other,

"The sky." and all the transient ways they've talked with each other,

"It'll be a few hours until the sun, still." and all the meaningless things they've learnt about each other.

 

"I think that's enough for us." It's a relationship that functions without words,

so natural it is

that it all makes sense in a way neither of them need to reach out for

as they hold each other close, holding each other together in a beautifully strange way,

under an ephemeral boundary resting from the surface of the night sky.

 

"It is." They want their moment,

and silently, it is a beautiful thing knowing that it will eventually end,

should she or she ever want to say it like that.

 

From behind, she feels a calm embrace around her where before there was just a hand in hers,

and Ran leaves the bound of that liminal space cast over the walls to rest beyond her back

and yet it dissolves into her imagination,

spurring her towards who she has turned to

who gazes into her calmly; her movements smooth in the darkness, but she is so warm

and time moves as Ran moves in,

and Yukina moves in too.

 

And it may have been however many minutes,

but the moment still hasn't left them even after they come to a stop,

and nestled into each other, they soak in the faint blue, and the patterns cast over the room, and the sparse intermittent swish that moves past the house, and the sky shades lighter than a deep dark

and the moment guides them forwards and down, as time slowly passes in an unmoving moment, from the night to their natural slumbers.

 

 

* * *

 

   
Oh, god... the morning hits Yukina, and it doesn't stop hitting her. Actually, it's like one hit that keeps hitting forever. Mm... they're in some place they broke into. Old. The lamppost outside is off, and it's a heady, stark daytime bright outside their two-person bubble. The windowsill casts no shadow... the room is not as beautiful as it had been when she'd briefly flickered awake a few hours ago, nestled against Ran's back, and the sill's dramatic umbra gave the room a deep morning form through which her mind breathed in the haze of dawn. Her last thought awake then had been whether to turn away from Ran's back, but wrapped in the warmth of the sleeping world, she had been satisfied with being returned to it, and had left the decision behind.

Mm. She did move in her sleep after that, though. Ran, too, who is buried in her pillow right now. Can she breathe?

This isn't the morning, actually. This is probably just a little later.

"Mitake." Rise and shine, because Yukina isn't sweeping this mess up without the other culprit complicit.

It takes one second, then Ran moans, then grumbles, then turns herself out of her pillow and lands face-up, and _then_  proves she's awake by grimacing (it's kind of cute, Yukina thinks in an _absolutely_ judgemental way), and forces out an oh-god-my-mouth-feels-awful sentence from whatever words fragments of her mind are serving her.

"Minato..." She knows Yukina's name, check. "Afternoon...? Already?" She knows how absolutely screwed they are, check.

"I believe so," Yukina responds unintentionally slowly, which thus drops her curt attitude and smashes it straight on the floor. Where are their-- okay, well, Yukina's phone fell out of her side pocket at some point last night onto the bed (which is why it never got in the way, now that she thinks about it), and she's pleasantly surprised she didn't crack it by lying on it.

Reaching for it... _straining_  to reach for it is hard. Its brightness is harder. "Oh, god, turn it off, Minato..." Ran'd just gotten her eyes open, and she did not need blinding phone rays to stab them back shut again.

Yukina delivers the news. "The time is 13:05, Mitake. And it appears we have plenty of messages from... well, from our friends... ranging from deeply concerned to concerningly prying." The sheer wall of unrequited correspondence staring her coldly in the eye is not quite staggering, but definitely enough to make one's next step slightly shaky.

She automatically starts swiping the list of notifications away one by one. Half of these are just "are you there?" or "Yukinaaaa". She's leaving the actual notification number on her messenger intact so she can prove a point once she sees her bandmates.

"...I need to look at my phone, then." Hm. Ran's voice, at this moment, is impossibly husky, Yukina notes. "Where is it?"

"I wouldn't know."

A mote in the air catches her eye, and she's suddenly occupied by taking in the room they're actually in. This is nothing but an abandoned house, she thinks, and there's still a drying rack standing in front of the window that nobody ever took with them. The place is dusty to the point of caking, the floorboards are a little torn up, and the fact the bed they're on even has a quilt is a nonsensical stroke of luck. From the sober perspective of the morning, Yukina realises this place is an absolute dump that nobody has had any reason to be in in what would likely be the last fifteen years.

Ran snags her phone from the floor, after spotting it through the tiniest crack in her eyelids and blindly sweeping with her hand for it. She awakens the screen, and tries to unlock the pattern without having to see, but a good couple of tries still doesn't get her the confirmation click.

Ugh.

Yukina prises open Ran's eyelids manually, and Ran yells from the very sudden, very... _very_  contact, jerking away. She takes a moment to recover.

"Don't... don't do that to me?" is the best Ran comes up with, though.

"Then wake up properly."

Leaving Ran to mumble threats of violence to herself - how wonderful she feels close enough to Yukina to do that - Yukina hangs off the edge of the bed, finally mentally prepared to take in this situation of hers...

Hmm.

 _I definitely would not have done this if I were sober,_ Yukina thinks. Although that's little comfort. She tries to compare it to an analogous statement to confirm how useless it sounds, but comes short of one at all. Morn-wracked mind, much appreciated.

...

It's afternoon. Not morning. Everything right now is far too far out of Yukina's scope.

She's got all her clothes on, at least... mmmmm, no, she hasn't. Something is missing from her head. "Mitake. Where is my hairbow?"

"Don't ask m... oh. Wait. I'm holding it."

"Hand it here."

Ran gasps a short, quiet gasp. "No. No, crap, I'm, uh... I don't think you should put this on."

"Why?"

"...look at it."

Ran presents it, out of the palm of her hand. Yukina looks at it.

It looks heavily crumpled, and... possibly spit-stained.

"Mm. I agree. I'm not putting that on. You can imagine that the just thing to do here is buy me a new one." So saying that, Yukina gets off the bed, picks up her handbag from the floor, and slips her loafers on. She certainly had the mind to place her items neatly against the bed the night before, but Mitake's items are strewn about. Shoes, bag, jacket, er, shorts... although there may have been some partial assistance, admittedly...

"Are you serious? Don't you have any spares? It's one bow..."

"As though my property deserves less respect than the norm."

"Tsk. Fine. Show me where you got it and I'll get you one. Don't even know if I should be spending this much time on you..."

...but, regardless. "Your time? You should be more concerned for the time _I_ sacrifice away from Roselia. If you weren't around, I could just as easily have been practicing this morning."

Ran gets out of bed, finally, rubbing her eyes. "What was it... eight times a week?"

Yukina averts her own eyes, lest she witness any indecency at a decent hour. At least Mitake is putting her shorts back on first. "Eight scheduled times a week as a band, minimum."

"Unbelievable."

"Roselia is my all. _Our_  all."

"Your life's your band, and your band's your life, huh?"

"Correct." Ah. The safe sound of fabric on one leg, followed by the other. Yukina turns back around to...

...for just a split-second, Ran's expression seemed tender. Off somewhere more sombre.

"Take care, at least. Of yourself. You'll make me worry about you. Like... I might not have been through it all like you - like you and Roselia... but I'm here too. Rely on me, if you want to, or something..."

Yukina's mind explodes, and then silently reassembles.

"...powerful words." Continue, tongue, while the immature mind catches up. "Your embarrassment is far too potent for its own good."

"Just...! Ugh... you get it."

"Almost. I almost... I almost get it. Apologies. Mitake, it makes me... very happy to hear what you have said."

"..."

"Very."

"Is that all?"

Yukina struggles for a moment. "You-- you get it. What I mean."

Ran stands back with her hands on her hips, breathes a deep breath, and sighs the clutter in her head off.

"Yeah. I guess I almost get it."

 

They both chuckle at that, and it's genuine, and it lifts all the weight away. All in the echo of their words,

a colourless, forward irony yet tinged in affection, and suddenly reality feels a lot closer to them.

It throws the outside into the relief of dazzling mid-afternoon light,

the room around them from their sensory captor into the mere space they've run into and gladly intend to run back out of,

and the world towards their selves, ready to enter as two under today's sky, for today's sun to finally see.

 

"Hey, Minato. Wanna hold hands?"

Yukina's stride forward catches Ran's grasp in hers. "Yes. And out of courtesy for the public, and for the sake of expedience, should I suggest we let go again once we're outside?" Her acerbic tongue is nestled now behind her faint, but assured smile, which is where Yukina's true honesty most shows.

"Yeah." With all the tired relief she's had in her life pouring out, Ran smiles back. "Agreed. C'mon, let's stop wasting our time in here."

"Wonderful. Now, then - we have a city to find our way back to, and an accessory store to patron."

 

 

* * *

 

   
"Hikawa--" "Sayo."

"Impressive. You've managed to put together my full name." Sayo stands arms crossed, with her firmly uncontented expression as hard as ever, yet (to Ran, at least), it feels like the word is more 'harsh' than 'hard' right now.

...beginning to feel unfamiliar discomfort, Ran glances down at her hand, which is holding one of a bunch of hairclip bows she'd been randomly picking up and putting back down. She's, um, kind of not sure what to say.

"What a stroke of chance, meeting you here. As you can see, Mitake and I are alive and well." (Okay, phew. Minato takes the lead.)

"That would be nice to find out through your _responding to any of us_. Honestly! Since the moment you two ran off last night! Only seconds prior now, I was worried to death as to where you could be, what situations you could've been caught up in, or whether you even still had any living status on this grand planet of ours. I'm only in this concourse because I'd resigned myself to wandering randomly around here on the suggestion of Imai to avoid sitting in one place and building stress - Hina should shortly find me up here, since she tagged along - and our studio session in two hours is _cancelled_ owing to your complete lack of communication. Truthfully, as Roselia's leader, I would've expected better of you."

Yukina...

Yukina looks unsure how to respond for a moment, but then nonchalantly picks up Ran's free hand behind her, as though that demonstrates something (it makes Ran flinch and stutter briefly).

"I was occupied, and I have faith your contact was with reasonable intent, but the amount of messages and calls you had put through to me is absurd. Here - never had I, and I'd hope neither have you, seen before a notification tally threaten to enter triple di-- _cancelled?"_

_"Yes."_

"Cancelled."

"Correct."

"Why?"

"Because... good lord, Mitake, _you_ explain it to her. While I'm sure I can forgive you two for this incident sooner rather than later, I have also had it up to here -"

her hand showing 'here' not too far above the top of her head -

"-stewing in concern for today, and I have a sister who has kindly informed me there is a machine in the arcade which will gauge how hard you can hit it, which I have now the free time to do nothing better with than attend repeatedly. I am about to call the rest of Roselia and inform them that you still exist, and I am sure Shirokane and Udagawa will be nothing but very relieved, on top of which Imai will now regret having accepted a shift at her part-time job this evening."

Sayo about-turns, storms with regality out of the accessory store, accosts and is accosted by her sister, shoots one last now-melting glare back through the doorway as she pulls out her phone, and strides out of sight immediately with Hina orbiting around her.

"..."

"..."

"...no practice today, then, huh?"

Yukina lets go of Ran's hand. "Mm. Seemingly not."

"Do you actually need me to...?"

"No. No, I think I can understand somewhat."

"Yeah, okay. Yeah. I figure you can probably catch up with her -" Ran sneezes lightly - "once we're done here. She said the arcade, right?"

"Indeed."

"Alright... hey, uh, what d'you think of this bow? Polka-dots... kinda reminds me of Himari."

"Absolutely not, Mitake. I forbid something this vapidly twee from gracing my hair under any circumstances."

"But... cat ears?"

By final way of response, and before Ran realises, Minato's stepped on her foot as hard as possible.

**Author's Note:**

> In a few moments, Ran's phone starts blowing up again, and she realises she didn't actually, like, get around to unlocking it earlier.
> 
> (heya! i'd had this one sitting unfinished for a good while, so i'm glad to finally have it out now. hope you enjoyed it!)
> 
> Owing partially to her well-trained arm strength, Sayo scores in the 90s repeatedly, and eventually has to be dragged off so "your sister can have a go". Hina scores a 62.


End file.
